<!-- summary: About GC Arena -->

# How to use `mrb_gc_arena_save()`/`mrb_gc_arena_restore()`/`mrb_gc_protect()`

_This is an English translation of [Matz's blog post][matz blog post]
written in Japanese._
_Some parts are updated to reflect recent changes._

[matz blog post]: https://www.rubyist.net/~matz/20130731.html

When you are extending mruby using C language, you may encounter
mysterious "arena overflow error" or memory leak or very slow
execution speed. This is an error indicating overflow of "GC arena"
implementing "conservative GC".

GC (garbage collector) must ensure that object is "alive", in other
words, that it is referenced by somewhere from the program. This can be
determined by checking if the object can be directly or indirectly
referenced by root. The local variables, global variables and
constants etc. are root.

If program execution is performed inside mruby VM, there is nothing to
worry about because GC can access all roots owned by the VM.

The problem arises when executing C functions. The object referenced
by C variable is also "alive", but mruby GC cannot aware of this, so
it might mistakenly recognize the objects referenced by only C
variables as dead.

This can be a fatal bug if the GC tries to collect a live object.

In CRuby, we scan C stack area, and use C variable as root to check
whether object is alive or not. Of course, because we are accessing C
stack just as memory region, we never know it is an integer or a
pointer. We work around this by assuming that if it looks like a
pointer, then assume it as a pointer. We call it "conservative".

By the way, CRuby's "conservative GC" has some problems.

The biggest problem is we have no way to access to the stack area in
portable way. Therefore, we cannot use this method if we'd like to
implement highly portable runtime, like mruby.

So we came up with another plan to implement "conservative GC" in mruby.

Again, the problem is when an object which was created in C function, becomes
no longer referenced in the Ruby world, and cannot be treated as garbage.

In mruby, we recognize all objects created in C function are alive.
Then we have no problem such as confusing a live object as dead.

This means that because we cannot collect a truly dead object, we may
lose efficiency, but as a trade-off the GC itself is highly portable.
We can say goodbye to the problem that GC deletes live objects due to
optimization which sometimes occurs in CRuby.

According to this idea, we have a table, called "GC arena", which
remembers objects created in C function.

The arena is stack structure, when C function execution is returned to mruby
VM, all objects registered in the arena are popped.

This works very well, but can cause another problem: "arena overflow error" or
memory leak.

As of this writing, mruby automatically extend arena to remember
objects (See `MRB_GC_FIXED_ARENA` and `MRB_GC_ARENA_SIZE` in
[doc/guides/mrbconf.md](mrbconf.md)).

If you create many objects in C functions, memory usage will increase, since
GC never kicks in. This memory usage may look like memory leaks, but will also
make execution slower as more memory will need to be allocated.

With the build time configuration, you can limit the maximum size of
arena (e.g., 100). Then if you create many objects, arena overflows,
thus you will get an "arena overflow error".

To work around these problems, we have `mrb_gc_arena_save()` and
`mrb_gc_arena_restore()` functions.

`int mrb_gc_arena_save(mrb)` returns the current position of the stack
top of GC arena, and `void mrb_gc_arena_restore(mrb, idx)` sets the
stack top position to back to given `idx`.

We can use them like this:

```c
int arena_idx = mrb_gc_arena_save(mrb);

// ...create objects...
mrb_gc_arena_restore(mrb, arena_idx);

```

In mruby, C function calls are surrounded by this save/restore, but we
can further optimize memory usage by surrounding save/restore, and can
avoid creating arena overflow bugs.

Let's take a real example. Here is the source code of `Array#inspect`:

```c
static mrb_value
inspect_ary(mrb_state *mrb, mrb_value ary, mrb_value list)
{
  mrb_int i;
  mrb_value s, arystr;
  char head[] = { '[' };
  char sep[] = { ',', ' ' };
  char tail[] = { ']' };

  /* check recursive */
  for (i=0; i<RARRAY_LEN(list); i++) {
    if (mrb_obj_equal(mrb, ary, RARRAY_PTR(list)[i])) {
      return mrb_str_new(mrb, "[...]", 5);
    }
  }

  mrb_ary_push(mrb, list, ary);

  arystr = mrb_str_new_capa(mrb, 64);
  mrb_str_cat(mrb, arystr, head, sizeof(head));

  for (i=0; i<RARRAY_LEN(ary); i++) {
    int ai = mrb_gc_arena_save(mrb);

    if (i > 0) {
      mrb_str_cat(mrb, arystr, sep, sizeof(sep));
    }
    if (mrb_array_p(RARRAY_PTR(ary)[i])) {
      s = inspect_ary(mrb, RARRAY_PTR(ary)[i], list);
    }
    else {
      s = mrb_inspect(mrb, RARRAY_PTR(ary)[i]);
    }
    mrb_str_cat(mrb, arystr, RSTRING_PTR(s), RSTRING_LEN(s));
    mrb_gc_arena_restore(mrb, ai);
  }

  mrb_str_cat(mrb, arystr, tail, sizeof(tail));
  mrb_ary_pop(mrb, list);

  return arystr;
}
```

This is a real example, so slightly complicated, but bear with me.
The essence of `Array#inspect` is that after stringifying each element
of array using `inspect` method, we join them together so that we can
get `inspect` representation of the entire array.

After the `inspect` representation is created, we no longer require the
individual string representation. This means that we don't have to register
these temporal objects into GC arena.

Therefore, in order to keep the arena size small; the `ary_inspect()` function
will do the following:

- save the position of the stack top using `mrb_gc_arena_save()`.
- get `inspect` representation of each element.
- append it to the constructing entire `inspect` representation of array.
- restore stack top position using `mrb_gc_arena_restore()`.

Please note that the final `inspect` representation of entire array
was created before the call of `mrb_gc_arena_restore()`. Otherwise,
required temporal object may be deleted by GC.

We may have an usecase where after creating many temporal objects, we'd
like to keep some of them. In this case, we cannot use the same idea
in `ary_inspect()` like appending objects to existing one.
Instead, after `mrb_gc_arena_restore()`, we must re-register the objects we
want to keep in the arena using `mrb_gc_protect(mrb, obj)`.
Use `mrb_gc_protect()` with caution because it could also lead to an "arena
overflow error".

We must also mention that when `mrb_funcall` is called in top level, the return
value is also registered to GC arena, so repeated use of `mrb_funcall` may
eventually lead to an "arena overflow error".

Use `mrb_gc_arena_save()` and `mrb_gc_arena_restore()` or possible use of
`mrb_gc_protect()` to workaround this.
